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"Just one more thing," the mariner says as he tosses the keys to you, watching as you catch them and glance towards the boat that you've just bought. "Don't go in the water."
"Yes," you respond bluntly, watching as your new houseboat bobs and rocks in the waves and tugs at the ropes securing it to the wooden dock. It's a mass of tangled cords weaving through the darkness, and you thumb the keys in your hand as you look back to the mariner. "I know… I've heard."
"Good," he nods firmly, spinning on his heel and beginning to walk away, toward the endless labyrinth of shipping containers and dockworkers and boats pulling in and out of the harbour. "Make sure you keep it in mind. Don't go in the water… for anything."
You watch as he walks away, slipping into the mess of the docks and vanishing from sight, leaving you alone to climb up onto the plank and into your boat - into your new home . It's dark inside, of course, old and musty and crumbling. But it's tucked away in an inconspicuous corner of the docks, away from the city and the police and the witch hunters who walk the winding streets of Gotham. It's safe , or as safe as you can be, practicing the illegal arts.
A larger wave crashes against the side of the boat and you sway on your feet as the wooden vessel rocks and groans with the movement, the water beating against the sides constantly - as if it's alive, as if it's trying to pull you further under. You know the stories told about the Gotham Harbour - you were warned when you fled to this place.
"Don't go in the water." people say. "There's something out there."
You'd asked around, of course, poked and prodded and peeled back layers of the tall tales that were spun in the darkness of the docks. You're not afraid of it - not the way that the others are. You're a creature of the night, yourself, of course, and things that move in the shadows don't scare you too much these days. It's humans who do the scaring, with their threats and their leering and their witchhunts.
They were small stories, at first - silly little anecdotes that the workers used to tell when their ships pulled into the docks. They would claim to have seen something moving in the water - glimpses of a shimmering, shining, fish-like tail seen out of the corner of their eyes and the faint sounds of a song sung through the fog, tempting and alluring, buzzed through their ears.
But they were harmless - just little stories the sailors would tell for fun to keep one another awake at night while they worked. They were all so sure that it was just tricks of the night and the mist… at first.
But then the casualties started. Sailors began to go missing from ships as they pulled into the harbour and some of them began to swear that they would watch their friends just walk right off the edge of the ship, stumbling and lurching like they were being pulled by something invisible.
"There's something out there," they'd swear. "And it's after us."
But nothing could be proved, of course, and none of the workers hauling illegal magical goods in and out of Gotham by the shadows of night wanted to be caught, so no one went to the authorities. And people just kept… disappearing.
And over time, naturally, the stories began to grow. The size of the tale began to double, then triple, until the tales told of a huge, serpent-like, scaled appendage that had the strength to crack the hull of a ship with one swipe. For some of the smaller vessels, the huge tail would wrap around the body of the ship, snapping it in half and dragging it to the bottom.
It glowed, they said, bioluminescent blues and greens and violets lighting up the water, a shimmering, shining beacon of death moving silently through the blackened depths.
But, you think pointedly as your boat rocks and sways and you swing the door open to let the sea breeze fill the stale interior. It's all speculation - some twisted story to justify the ships that suddenly began to go missing, some kind of hallucination that the survivors spun in the wake of trauma.
As you walk back outside to lean against the railing of the boat and peer into the murky depths of the harbour, you remember what the mariner had said to you when you bought the boat, watching as you'd counted out bills in front of him, both of you insisting on a cash-only transaction.
"The ships still come in and out," he'd said lowly, his arms crossed as he stared out towards the rolling waves. "But folks are getting antsy - scared. Some of the buyers want their shit moved other ways. You know, coming through the city on trucks instead."
"And does that work?" you'd asked absently, stacking money neatly as you half listened.
"Not really," he'd admitted. "It's all still taken to the docks, and… well, you know."
As the boat rocks and you shake your head in an attempt to rid yourself of the conversation, you can't help but let the mariner's words spin around your mind just a bit more. You can't help but picture it in your head - dockworkers, moving through the thick fog that filters through the night, wandering off the wooden edge and into the water like those sailors, pulled and pulled and tugged under by something monstrous.
Droplets of rain begin to fall from the darkened, thunderous sky and you shiver as you stare down into the water for a moment before crouching. Slowly, carefully, you stick your arm through the railing of your boat and let your fingers dip just below the surface, feeling the icy waters for a moment before pulling back and inspecting your hand.
"Don't go in the water," people had said. "There's something wrong with it. There's something cursed about it." You hum in thought as you try to rub warmth back into your fingers, the freezing sensation from the water sticking to you and travelling up your arm as the rain begins to fall steadily.
You've heard the stories, you know what Gotham is - a festering breeding ground for illegal magic, with its waters serving as a dumping ground for the pollution that comes with it. Years of it have turned the harbour into a magical chemical wasteland, and you shudder as the coldness seeps further into your skin and begins to turn your fingertips blue.
"Don't go in the water," people had said, lest you find yourself developing a glowing blue-green tinge and struggling to breathe in air above water - lest you freeze over and stumble back in and fall down into the depths.
Don't go in the water - it will never let you out.
Below the surface of the water, two milky blue eyes stare forward - stare at you . Afternoon rolls into night and days roll into weeks and he watches, lets his tail swish through the water, sending waves crashing against the side of your boat. The vial that you'd been dipping into the water slips from your grasp and into the depths below. But you just sigh, mostly unbothered, before filling a second vial with the murky, darkened substance.
You're not like the others, he finds - you're not scared of him the way that the others are. You're curious, instead, and it's a curiosity that he finds himself mirroring throughout the days, watching you as you study the water, filling vials upon vials with it and bringing it into your little floating home.
But there is, he realizes over time, still a fear in you. As he haunts the waters underneath your boat, he sees the way you shrink away from the dockworkers - the way you back away from the lights and noises of the city and keep to the relative safety of your boat. He sees your fear and recognizes it - sees it the way that he sees his own.
He knows, somewhere deep and intrinsic, that you're hiding from the same world that he is. And that curiosity in him becomes bravery as he watches you dip that second vial into the water and he sees your fingers, once tinged blue-green and frozen from the polluted waters. They look healthy now, warm and nimble as they pop the cap onto the vial. He stares, as much as he can with his milky, clouded eyes, down towards his own hands and wonders, ever so hopefully, if you can help him, too.
So he watches. And you, in turn, watch back. You begin seeing it, every now and then and out of the corner of your eye - glimpses of a large, powerful, scaled tail. Flashes of that glowing blue-green hue. Whispers of a song over the breeze. And that curiosity that he's become so fond of as he circles your boat in the darkness of night, trying his best to watch you - he finds that curiosity mirrored as you lean over the railing, eyeing him through the rippling waves.
It's late one night, the moon hanging low in the darkened sky as the waves roll through the harbour, when he swims idly through the waters underneath your boat. He wonders, ever so curiously, if all people like you are so clumsy as you drop a vial you'd been working with, the dropper in your hand falling into the waters below and sinking towards the bottom. You sigh, a long-suffering sort of thing as you grip onto the railing and try to balance with the boat's swaying and rocking.
You're standing slowly, your hand still wrapped tightly around the wooden rail when something crashes out of the water towards you. You lurch back a bit, your feet unsteady on the damp wood, but a strong arm wraps around your waist and keeps you upright while you stare at the being in front of you.
The creature haunting the Gotham Harbour, the monster of the deep, the serpent stalking the waters and pulling sailors to their deaths. Here he towers before you, his arm retracting away from you so that he can prop himself up on the railing of your boat and let his lengthy, scaled tail swish through the water beneath him.
You slip towards him as the force of him - as the weight of his enormous finned tail tips the boat ever so slightly and brings you closer to him. He looks down at you, leaning forward with his human torso as his eyes, milky and blurred, stare down and you grip onto the railing between the two of you in an effort to keep yourself upright.
When your knuckles brush against the jagged scales, though, an intricate pattern of blues and greens and violets scraping against your skin, he hisses and bares sharped, razor-like canines at you.
But you just blink, tipping your head back to look up at him - at his eyes and the white swirls clouding them over. Because you know what it looks like when magic rots you from the inside, when it eats away at you and turns you into something nightmarish. And you've been studying this water - you know of the pollution and the poisoning and the horrors that it causes.
So you reach, out of instinct perhaps, towards him. You reach as your eyes sweep over his hair, bluish-black and dripping, over the water droplets that run down his abs and towards the gills covering his ribs, twitching and fluttering and struggling . You reach, and you're not all too surprised when he hisses again and lurches away from you.
But he reaches a cold, wet hand towards you instead of fleeing further and all but throws something at your chest, making you stumble back with a huffed breath and grab it before it falls. And it's the vial, you realize numbly as you stare down at it in your hands - the one that you'd dropped. His claws, you notice slowly, have hit you, too - ripping through your shirt just a bit and prompting little trails of blood to ooze out, darkened by the blanket of night that covers the two of you.
"You -," you begin, but the creature is already pushing himself away from the railing, diving gracefully back into the water with a deadly silence and leaving you with your head spinning and your lungs burning as you stare at the water where he once appeared.
Admittedly, the next time you drop something over the edge of your boat, it's more intentional than it usually is, and you crouch rather close to the water with your arms wrapped around your knees while you wait to see if he'll show up again. Sure enough, it's mere moments before he propels himself out of the water and drops the lost object onto the wooden deck, staring toward you with those milky, vacant eyes.
You stand slowly while he stares, his arms propping him up on the railing while you move towards him. He stays still, this time, tense and unwavering as you step closer and look at his faded, unfocused eyes.
"I can help you," you say, pointing first at your own eyes and then at his. "Let me?" He just stares, though, white, glazed eyes looking on as the gills that line over his ribs twitch and shiver, morphed and altered by the harbour waters, forgetting the feel of the clean, cool oceans. He can't leave, you realize. Gotham Harbour has ensnared him, turned him into a monster that could only ever exist and survive here.
He disappears as you study him, slipping back into the murky, blackened water and leaving you sighing, your shoulders slumping in momentary defeat.
But then you hear it, a faint banging sound coming from inside your home - and you lurch, moving to rip open the door.
You see it then, the trapdoor that you have partially covered by a rug and the latch trembling with the force of something shoving at it from underneath. You move forward in a rush, after staring and blinking and letting your mind reel for a moment, to unlock the latch and let the trapdoor swing up and open, wrinkling the rug and covering it in that cursed harbour water as the creature pulls himself up through the opening and leans on his arms to look at you.
You stare, mouth slightly open as you take in the creature in front of you, letting his tail swish and move in the waves beneath him and dripping water onto your floor.
"…Help me," he says slowly, and his voice is smooth, soft and sing-songy in a way that makes you walk towards him and fold yourself down onto your knees to look at him face-to-face.
"You can speak?" you ask in lieu of a response. He frowns, his dark, water-slicked brows bunching together as he stares in your direction.
"There is a part of me that's human, after all," he says quietly. You huff out a breath and reach for him ever so slowly, letting your fingers hover for just a moment before making contact with his cheek. He makes a surprised little noise, jerking his head away from you for a second before shifting on his palms and leaning back into your touch.
"Thank you," you murmur quietly as you trace a finger over his brow bone before letting your forefinger hook under his chin so that you can tilt his head slowly and look at his eyes.
"Can you… fix it?" he asks slowly, a hesitance in his smooth, silky voice.
"I can," you respond simply, smiling ever so lightly even though you know he probably can't really see it. "I said I'd help you… and I will."
It's a slow process, of course, to begin to heal and change him after that, bringing the colour and life back to his eyes. It's weeks of him pulling himself up through the trapdoor in the bottom of your boat to let you poke and prod at him, giving him various vials to drink from and coaxing him to tip his head back so that you can drop strange liquids into his eyes.
It's difficult for him, you know, odd and uncomfortable and frightening. So you don't mind, really, when he hisses and snaps his teeth and grabs your arm to dig his blue-black claws in until blood runs down your skin. He doesn't mean to, you know. So you let him.
And it works, much to his delight - the magic you use on him begins to soothe the symptoms of the polluted water. He's still this thing, of course, he'll never go back to being a regular mermaid, but he's not in pain - not the way he was before. His eyes don't burn and his head doesn't feel light and dizzy anymore, riddled with haziness and pain.
Eventually, the white milkiness fades and his irises shine blue once more - it's not the blue they used to be, you're sure. They're vibrant and glowing and unnatural, but they're blue and they're his and he can see the world through them, finally. He can see you - really see you for the first time.
"Hi," you breathe quietly, a smile flitting gently across your lips as you watch him blink rapidly, his eyes glancing quickly around the space to take in his surroundings properly for the first time in so, so long.
And then, of course, his eyes find their way back to you, kneeling on the cold, wooden floor so that you're at eye level with him and looking at him with those big, hopeful eyes of yours. He reaches for you, then - he can't help it, not when you're kind and gentle and staring at him like he's something precious. You let him, though your brows shoot up in surprise when he leans forward.
"You're beautiful," he says lowly, close enough to you that his breath touches your face. You make a small, surprised sort of sound and glance away from him, but he reaches for you with a firm hand, cupping your cheek and smashing his lips against yours in a firm kiss. You make a high-pitched, surprised noise somewhere in the back of your throat and when he pulls away you shift on your knees, clearing your throat and looking at him in bemusement.
"Thank you," he says simply, and you nod and hum in mock understanding.
"I'd like to, uh, I'd like to try fixing your gills a bit, too - if you'd let me." The grin that he gives you in response to your request makes you bite your lip in immediate regret.
"I think I'd let you do just about anything to me now," he says flippantly. You sniff indignantly and rub a hand over your face harshly, but cold, smooth fingers wrapping around your wrist stop you.
"Oh, that's just…" but you trail off as he pulls up your sleeve slowly, revealing dark, crimson welts where he'd dug his claws into you so many times. You stay still as he stares, holding your breath as he runs a delicate finger over the cuts and looks unblinkingly down towards them.
"It's… it's ok," you say slowly. "It's alright."
"Seems like such a monstrous thing to do, doesn't it?" Dick says, ignoring your words. "To hurt the thing that's trying to help you." When he looks up at you then, you take notice of his clear, unblemished eyes for the first time. They're sharp and flashing, the deep blues and violets swirling in them as they draw you further, further, further in.
He looks… dangerous, you realize sluggishly. He looks a bit like a wild animal, and as the waves beneath your boat crash against the wooden hull and water sloshes up from the opening onto his torso and your floor, you think, rather distantly, about the stories of the creature who haunts the harbour - who drags people to the depths.
"Are you?" you ask quietly as your heart hammers against your ribs. "Are you a monster?" His grip on you tightens and you find yourself entranced by the shimmering colour of his eyes - a part of your mind begins to panic, begins to try to break away, but you find that you just… can't .
"Oh, I wasn't always," he murmurs lowly. "But I think I am now. I think I was turned into one, don't you?"
"No…" you respond slowly, placing your hand over his where it grips your wrist and watching as the touch seems to shock him out of whatever trance he'd been in. "I think that's up to you." He blinks at you for a moment then, reeling, it would seem, from the entire interaction before he looks back down and sees the way he's gripping your arm, the cuts blemishing your skin there, oozing thin trails of red over his hand.
You sigh in relief, much to your own guilt, when he wrenches his hand away from you and steadies himself as water sloshes up against him. As he breathes deeply and runs a cold, blue-tinged hand through his hair roughly, you stand and turn to rummage in a chest for bandages and ointment and whatever else you need.
"I didn't -" he starts.
"I know," you cut him off, tucking yourself into a chair some distance away from him and rolling up your sleeve so that you can dab at the wounds gently. "It's alright."
"Then why won't you look at me?" he asks, and there's a harsh edge to his voice that makes you pause. It's a divergence from his normal smooth, silky voice that wafts over the breeze and has sailors stumbling towards him in a haze. It's wavering, now, jagged and honest and it makes you huff out a breath.
"Careful," you quip, but you still don't look up. "You sounded almost human there." You hear him sigh quietly and the waves rock the boat as he shifts his stance and pulls himself up and further out of the water.
"What are you doing?" This time you do look at him, throwing down the bandages that you'd been unravelling as he pulls himself further into your boat, letting his tail propel himself out of the water until he's laying almost on his back on your floor, propping himself up on his elbows and tipping his head back to stare at your ceiling as he drips water onto your rug.
"You're overextending your welcome, Dick," you say eventually, but there's a distinct lack of bite in your voice and his lazy grin proves that he knows that it's not a real jab, not when you say his name so sweetly - the name that he's whispered against you like a secret all those nights ago.
"I'm looking at your home," Dick responds easily, and you follow his gaze up toward the dried herbs hanging from your rafters.
You sigh, then, rolling your neck to try to ease some of the tension as you gather your first aid kit and bring them back toward him. He watches out of the corner of his eye as you kneel beside him once more, your knees hitting the soft rug with a dull thud as you begin unravelling the bandages once more.
Dick rolls onto his side to face you, though, propping himself up on just one elbow and reaching to take the bandages from your hands and coax you into giving him your arm.
"You're a bit hot and cold, aren't you?" you observe quietly, your voice a low murmur as he takes your injured arm so delicately in his hands and begins wrapping the bandages over the damaged skin.
"I don't mean to be," he answers honestly. You just shrug.
"I don't mind… I think we all are sometimes," you say honestly. He glances up at you, the blue of his eyes shimmering as he draws his brows together.
"You've only been kind to me."
"You haven't known me that long," you point out, but he just shoots you a scathing look.
"You might… just not give yourself enough credit," he offers as he finishes bandaging your arm, securing it and smoothing his hands over it to ensure that everything is as it should be. "I think you're a good person," he says earnestly.
"I think you're a good person, too," you reply easily, but he freezes at your words for a moment before he pulls his hands away from you and rolls onto his back, letting his shoulders thump against your rug as he lays his hands over his stomach.
"There's not much of me left that could be seen as a person ," he says quietly, and as his tail swishes, it bumps against the side of the trapdoor opening. Glancing at it for just a moment, you wonder how big it really is - how far down into the icy, blackened depths it really goes.
"I don't know," you start, and your teasing tone has him narrowing his eyes at you as you raise yourself up to shuffle closer on your knees and lean over him, bracing your hands on either side of his head as you look down at him scrutinizingly. "Your eyes look pretty good to me. Almost human ."
He makes a face at that, wrinkling his nose as he lifts his hands off of his stomach to let one wrap gently around your wrist and the other smooth over the back of your thigh where you're still leaning over him.
"I don't care for being human ," he huffs. "Just not… this." You let your eyes flicker over his torso at his words before they settle on the gills lining the sides of his ribs. He watches, one hand still trailing up and down the back of your thigh as you shift your weight slightly. When you place one hand overtop of the gills ever so gently, your palm just barely brushing against them, you watch as they twitch and move.
"I said I'd help you with that, didn't I?" you murmur, looking down at the way they move underneath your touch.
"That was -" he starts, and he looks away with a bashfulness - with a guilt that doesn't look like it belongs. "That was before I hurt you."
"Oh, I don't mind," you respond easily, shifting your weight back onto your palms where they now rest on either side of his head again. "Just as long as you never look at me like that again." You lean down as you speak, comforting the guilty look in his eyes with a kiss on his cheek that has him sighing underneath you.
"I think you should keep it unlocked," he says quietly, and you hum in confusion before glancing at the lock of the trapdoor and grinning just a bit.
"What, you planning on dropping by?" you quip, but one of his arms slides around your waist and he pulls you closer to him, your thighs widening as he tugs you down.
"Probably," he answers easily, and you huff a bit.
"What if something else decides to come pay me a visit, hm?" You say it mostly as a joke, but Dick's look sours and you catch a glimpse of his sharp, deadly canines as his lip curls in unhappiness.
"I won't let that happen," he offers firmly, his grip on you tightening. "I won't let anything happen to you."
"Well," you say, a bit breathless. "I guess I have nothing to worry about, then."
"You're distracting me," you murmur, sighing long-sufferingly when you're met with nothing more than a watery giggle in response to your chastising. You're sitting on the edge of your boat, cross-legged to keep your feet from touching the water as your hands flit over his gills to check the progress of their healing.
But his hands roam over you, too, smoothing over your ribs and twirling your hair through his cold fingers as he watches you work. Below you, somewhere in the impossible, twisted depths of the harbour, his massive tail thumps against the underside of the boat and tips you forward until your forehead knocks against his chest and he giggles again in that tantalizing, siren-like way of his.
"Really, Dick," you continue as you plant a hand on the smooth, cold skin of his chest to steady yourself and huff in mock annoyance. "You should be much better now. Is it… do they feel different?"
"Of course," he answers quickly, but when you purse your lips in annoyance, he grins flippantly and you feel his twisted gills twitch under your fingers. "They do," he assures gently, a bit more serious this time. "I… I feel like I can breathe again. I feel like…"
He stops then, looking out towards the docks and the endless, tangled maze of shipping containers and docked boats as you watch him. You smooth your hand more firmly over his side as another wave rocks the boat and you wonder, with a bit less concern than perhaps you should have, if it's him that's churning the waters down below - or if there's something else down there in the blackened depths.
"You're free now," you supply for him when he doesn't finish speaking, and he starts in surprise and snaps his gaze to you, looking at you imploringly with those widened, twisted blue eyes.
"Free?" he asks haltingly.
"Mhmm," you nod slowly. "It's… I don't know. It's this place, isn't it? It's that water." You reach up as you speak, smoothing his bluish-black hair out of his eyes and pressing your lips together as you consider how to explain it - how to define the twisted curse of this place that you've both found yourselves trapped in.
"It's like, once you're here," he begins, pausing and looking out towards the vast harbour, the endless darkness of the water seemingly swallowing the sunlight that touches it. "Once you're here… you can never really leave."
"It's… yea. Something like that," you agree, chewing your lip as you roll his words over in your mind. And it's like he knows - it's like those impossibly blue eyes can look right through you when he stares, because he taps his finger against your hip and you blink up at him.
"What about you?" he asks softly. "What curse is keeping you here?"
You open your mouth to respond, to say something in comfort as the twisting trap of the harbour looms behind you, but a noise on the dock startles the two of you. By the time you realize that it's a couple of dockworkers wandering too close to your secluded little safe haven, he's already slipped from your grasp, disappearing into the icy, cursed waters below and sinking to somewhere where you can't follow.
Huffing a bit, you stand and stretch and stare out towards the water for just a moment before heading inside. And as you look out, as you stare and hope and wait, you see the ripple of something breaking through the surface - you see the shimmering, finned tail pop out of the water just enough so that you know… he's still down there. He's right underneath you, haunting the waters that he now calls home.
"I'm going to start keeping that locked again if you don't stop doing that," you say breathlessly as you put a hand over your heart. The trapdoor at the bottom of your boat had just been swung open rather abruptly, slamming against the wooden floor so that he can pull himself out of the water.
"Why are there so many people searching the docks for you?" is all he says in response, his eyes flashing as he stares intently towards you. You just sigh and move to sit next to him, crossing your legs on the plush carpet and leaning on your palm as you look at him.
"They're witch hunters," you say simply. "This is illegal, you know."
"But you help people," he presses, something swirling in his eyes as he leans closer to you in anger. "What will they do to you when they find you?"
"Haven't you seen the smoke?" you shrug, leaning back and blinking as the intensity rolling off of him in waves makes you dizzy. "They're witch pyres."
"What?"
"It's a death sentence," you explain patiently. "If they can prove that someone's using witchcraft, it's… there's a death penalty. They're just hanging around to see if they can catch me. They can't arrest me without proof."
He stares at you, then, for a moment long enough that you shift where you sit and sigh deeply. But then he turns to stare out of one of the glazed windows, eyeing the flickering shadows of the world outside as if every one of them is a threat.
"Why not stop, then?" he asks quietly, keeping his gaze on the window.
"Stop?" you splutter. "Why would I?"
"Because you'll die," he says firmly. You smile gently, a bit too at ease with the whole thing than he is.
"We all die for something," you say softly. "I may as well die for living." He looks back at you, then, something large and sad and haunting in his gaze as he stares down at you. A bit of water sloshes up onto your floor as his tail trashes through the water below and you cock your head to the side in question as you wait for him to speak.
"I thought that once, too," he says slowly - haltingly, like the words scrape at his throat on their way out. "I thought that, when the poachers caught me - when they shipped me to this place like cargo. And when I escaped… I thought these waters would kill me."
"But isn't it better," you respond softly, smoothing a hand over his heart as he looks down at you with furrowed brows, his hair dripping water down his face. "To die free, in the seas, instead of in a cage?"
"That's what I thought," he nods.
"And now?" you ask slowly. A frown tugs at his lips and he sighs as he looks down at you, his lips pressed together into a thin line.
"Now I wonder… if this is what this place has turned me into… what will it do to you?" You straighten at his words, huffing out a breath in surprise as he stares imploringly at you. But then you clear your throat and let your gaze rake over his figure. Glancing at the gills that now sit healthy and fluttering, at the crystal clear gaze of his eyes and the steady beating of his heart.
"Don't say it like there's no going back," you say instead of really answering. "I can't turn you back into what you were before, but you're whole again now, aren't you? You're free , remember?" He just sighs at that, though, and lets his eyes close as he leans forward to press his forehead against yours. Droplets of water drip from his face onto yours, leaving tangled trails of shining, cold wetness over your cheeks.
"But what will you do, then?" he asks quietly. "If I'm not here to keep you safe?"
"I'll be alright," you whisper back, smoothing a hand over the back of his neck to rub soothing circles into his skin with your thumb as you let your eyes flutter closed.
Dick's hand finds your waist and he tightens his grip, his fingers pressing in as if you'll disappear if he doesn't hold on. He thinks of it - of the wide blue seas, of the breeze and the rolling waves and sun beating down. He thinks of the freedom beyond this tangled web of darkness and something painful tugs at his heart.
As he opens his eyes and tilts his head back to look down at you, small and alive and looking up at him with a trust that he's never known before, he wonders if perhaps this is the real curse of Gotham. It's not that you can't leave - it's that, suddenly, you find that you never really want to.
But, of course, the stories have continued to rage on outside of your little safe haven, and whispers spread through the tangled streets about the creature in the deep… and now those stories include you. People have begun speculating that there's a witch practicing in the harbour, and stories tell of someone helping the monster of the water, making him stronger and more powerful and more capable of harm than ever before.
And you hear them, of course, the tales and the rumours and the fear that begins to spread. It seeps into your home, oozing through the wooden planks and wrapping around you at night as you sit alone, no longer finding company in the blackened waters below.
You sent him away, you remind yourself. You gave him freedom and now he's gone. It's a fact that you remember with a startling zip of panic one night, when the moon hangs low and your breath fogs in front of your face as you wind through the maze of the docks quickly and quietly.
It's not often that you leave your boat these days, but it has to happen sometimes - and judging from the glinting stares of the dockworkers, you're not the only one who knew that. You know that you're being followed - you know how this night will end. The law may have to wait for proof to see you dead, but the poachers slinking around the docks and hauling illegal cargo aren't bound by such rules, and the menacing cloud hanging over you proves that.
You freeze suddenly, jerking yourself out of your thoughts as you stare out at the dock in front of you - at the raging water beyond and the poachers that you can see just beyond the shipping crates. You have nowhere left to run , you realize haltingly. There is no safety to be found for you on this cursed night.
You think idly, as you stare out towards the abandoned waters, about what he'd said to you before you'd sent him away. You'll die for this , he's promised. If you set me free and you stay behind, you'll die in this cursed place .
Of course I will , you'd thought. But you hadn't expected it to be so soon. A thunderous wave crashes up onto the wooden dock and you consider, for just a moment, how lucky you may be to die free, standing on the edge of this curse and leaning out towards the open seas.
And then you hear it, the dull footsteps and the jeering of approaching poachers, violence dripping off of them and staining the space between you all. You see it, the glint of a knife being pulled from somewhere hidden, the rolling shoulders of a man succumbing to fear.
And then… and then …
The huge, finned tail of a creature born of cursed nightmares and vengeance, breaking the water's surface to arch high overhead and make everyone stumble to a halt. You think, rather alarmed, that you really, really hadn't realized just how much of him he'd kept unseen - you notice it for the first time as the sheer size of the scaled tail fills the sky above you, the shimmering, thick fins blocking out the moonlight and casting a great, swallowing shadow over the dock in front of you.
And then it moves , swift and powerful enough to send a gust of wind in your direction, tearing through your hair as you watch the tail smash through the wooden dock between you and the poachers. They scream , panicked and stumbling as the dock splinters and cracks and crumbles underneath you all, and the tail simply raises again to slam down a second time, now aiming directly for the men.
You hear it, as you stumble and misstep, the wooden planks collapsing beneath you - you hear the sickening cracks of the poachers being slammed by the tail, crushing them as they scream.
But then the wood under your feet finally gives way, and you find yourself plummeting into the icy, darkened waters below.
And these waters, you recall in a hazy, far away sort of way, aren't fit for humans - even ones like you. Dark and cold and murky, it burns and freezes and blurs out your mind and thinking. Stay out of the water , you think as you sink further down, down, deep towards the bottom, the faint lights of the dock disappearing above.
Stay out of the water - or it will never let you out.
You notice it in a sort of trance, as if it's happening to someone else and you're watching through a window - you can almost feel it, the arms that wrap around you, cold and firm. You can almost feel the water move around you as he begins to pull you up, out of the impossible depths and back towards the surface, towards the light and the warmth of the open night sky.
The water is impossible to see through, dark and muddy and hazing your vision, but you can see, through the cloudy ripples, the bioluminescent glow of his tail - like pinpricks of light, blue and violet and green, swirling all around you.
You let your eyes try to follow the lights, but they twist and move and spread so far away that they fade into the depths, and the sight has you choking out a gasp and spluttering as the toxic water begins to fill your lungs - it has you reeling as you wonder, yet again, just how monstrous his figure really is.
But then the trapdoor of your boat is being slammed open from underneath and he's pulling you out of the water to lay you onto the plush rug in your home, letting you cough and splutter and gasp for breath. You tremble and shake, the cold from the water seeping into you and freezing you from the inside out as your lungs struggle and burn from the air you're trying to gasp in.
Dick's learned, though, you think distractedly as you watch him pull himself up and out of the water after you. He understands the witchcraft that you do and the potions that you make. It doesn't take long for him to have you pressed against him, curled into his chest as he brings vials to your lips gently, urging you to drink until your lungs begin to expand properly and your eyes focus on him.
By the time your mind begins to clear again, your chest rising and falling in a steadier pattern as your breathing evens out once more, Dick's laying on the rug next to you, curling around you in a protective sort of embrace, and you sit up just enough to see the beginnings of his tail winding around you as well until you're in a makeshift sort of nest. As your eyes follow his tail through its twists and curls and settle on where it continues down into the murky water, you can't help but think back to the impossible power of it that you'd witnessed before.
"Don't move," he murmurs sternly, tugging you back down to press you against his chest again. You're still shaking, trembling from the cold that still lingers under your skin, and the sight makes him frown as he swipes a thumb over your lips as they stay stained blue from the freezing temperatures of the water. His skin, as he shifts against you, you're sure doesn't help - always cold to the touch, always inhumanly freezing.
"Just let me get something," you respond quietly, your voice raspy from the strain you'd put on your throat and lungs. A frown tugs on his lips, but he lets you stand on shaky legs and take just a few steps away from him to snatch the blanket off of the back of your armchair before you're stumbling back to him. That frown of his doesn't begin to ease until he's got you pressed against him again, the blanket tucked securely around you and his hands flitting around, smoothing down the fabric and tucking in the corners.
"I thought you were gone," you admit softly, your face pressed against his chest. His hands still a bit before he's smoothing a palm over the back of your hair and pressing a kiss to your forehead.
"I wouldn't leave you like this," he responds gently, his voice soothing in that soft, slow way of his. "I couldn't leave you to do this alone."
"But what about you ?" you push. "Don't you want to go home?" Dick sighs at that, wrapping the blanket tighter around you where it's begun to slip off of your shoulder.
"There's something about this place," he muses, like there's a point that he's sidestepping - like there's something that he doesn't want to admit. "I guess I couldn't really find it in me to - there's something about… I don't know, this place. This city and this harbour and… and you. It's like I'm rooted here."
"I'm… sorry," you offer gently. He just places a soothing kiss to your cheek and squeezes you gently in his arms as if to say it's not your fault. This isn't your curse. This isn't your trap.
"I think…" he begins slowly, smoothing a hand up and down your spine. "That there may not be anything for me out there anymore. Not… not with this curse of mine" He glances down at himself as he speaks, at his twisted tail and the way the scales ripple and catch the light. You may have healed his pain, sure, but not even you could turn him into what he was before. He's this monster now, warped and twisted and deadly… and that's just the way it is, he thinks.
"I suppose," you respond slowly. "There's no breaking curses like ours. Maybe there really is no escaping this place."
"But is it so bad?" he offers gently, crooking his forefinger under your chin to make you look up at him, to sweep his thumb over your bottom lip once more and feel the warmth returning to you, flushing your skin. "Is it so horrible to share a curse like this?"
"No," you murmur as his lips find yours, soft and gentle and cold to the touch. "Maybe it's not."
"And besides," Dick adds, a humour seeping into his voice that has you narrowing your eyes in suspicion. "It seems you clearly need something lurking in the water to look out for you."
"Um… do you need to deal with that?" The woman you're speaking to is staring at the trapdoor in the bottom of your boat with a concerned sort of shock as the hinges rattle and the lock creaks.
"What? No, no, it's -" you say as you slam your foot onto it, stomping the wood aggressively. "It's just the waves." She's looking at you like she doesn't believe you, and the banging sound that's coming from the trapdoor isn't helping much, you're sure.
"Alright, I - um, that's right. I - I have your payment here," the woman continues politely, handing you an envelope. You flip it open to count the bills in it quickly, keeping one foot planted firmly on the rattling trapdoor. It may be illegal, this practice of yours, but condemning witchcraft has yet to make it unhelpful. Even now, months after your move to Gotham, you have a steady stream of customers slipping into your boat and asking for your help.
"Ok, come back soon!" You call as the woman makes a hasty exit after you've approved her money, glancing back to the trapdoor with a scared sort of look before she disappears.
It's once she's gone, then, that you lift your foot and unlock the latch before stepping back just in time for Dick to throw the door up and open with a loud bang.
"Why did you lock it?" he huffs as he pulls himself up, catching the towel that you toss to him.
"I always lock it when I have customers," you sigh good-naturedly, sitting next to him and watching as he hastily dries off himself, keeping the polluted harbour water away from your rug. "We really… we really can't be seen like this."
"I don't know what you mean," Dick sniffs indignantly, but the sly look that he shoots you as he tosses the towel aside says otherwise. You let him get away with it, of course, doing nothing but settling further and letting him sprawl himself across your lap.
"I'm serious," you say, but you begin to card your fingers through his hair gently as you chastise him and you watch as he lets his eyes flutter closed, his tail swishing through the water below you and rocking the boat in soothing movements. "All of us have to be careful. There are rumours of a purge going on - people are even talking about bringing the vampire hunts back."
"Vampires?" Dick opens one eye to squint up at you. "In Gotham? That can't be true."
"You'd be surprised," you murmur, but you shush him nonetheless, letting him close his eyes again as you smooth over his furrowed brows with your thumb.
"You're not… you're not really upset, are you?" he says slowly - quietly, like he's afraid of the answer.
"With you?" you respond easily. "No, never." You lean down to kiss him, then, delicate little things placed first on his lips and then across his face as he relaxes against you. You both know, by now, that you're not really upset. How can you be? When you have a home and a practice and a rather vicious guard dog who loves you so much.
How can you be upset? With this life that you've built for yourself and this curse that you've tamed.